Sell All and Buy Christ

I did not want you to hear me singing. One of my goals, make sure that was off until I got up here. Good morning. It is a great privilege to be with you today. This day, the Lord has made us rejoice and be glad in it. This day set aside for the worship of himself or his glory, the gathering of his people is a privilege to be here. And I am very humbled by the invitation to come and preach God's word for you. So let's be about the father's business. Please take your Bibles. I invite you to turn with me. To Matthew, chapter 13. Dealing with three well-known parables. Today is our text. Versus 44 through 50. So let us hear now the word of the Lord. As inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. which a man found and covered up, then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it again. The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea. and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad. So it will be at the close of the age, the angels will come and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And this is the word of the Lord and the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Let's pray together. Father, we come to you and we are your sheep and father, we come to you this morning to be said. And father, I come to you this morning as your under shepherd in weakness and much trembling with this poor lisping, stammering tongue. And father, we come as we have just sung as children of time. Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away. So father, what we need today more than anything else is to hear your word, to hear from you. So we ask that you grant us illumination. The father, you would speak to us through your word that you would use your word to grow us and mature us and sanctify us, that you would make your word clear to us. In spite of my weakness, because I do come in significant weakness with no ingenuity and no message to bring of my own, no, no wisdom, no power, nothing but your gospel, father. But it is the power of God unto salvation. And our hope is in that and trust is in that. So, father, if anything I say here in these next few moments, it does not square with your word is not faithful. I ask that you would strike it from our minds that it would fall to the ground and be of no effect. That you might be glorified and that we might be edified. We pray these things in the strong name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Two news stories from September, October of 2008, a newspaper, former newspaper reporter, so start with the news here. By the time you foreclose on my house, I'll be dead. So read the note that 50, 53 year old Carlene Balderrama of Taunton, Massachusetts, faxed to her mortgage company, according to Taunton Police Chief Raymond Oberg. The message turned out to be tragically prophetic. According to reports, PHH Mortgage Corporation, the company foreclosing on Balderrama's home, notified police of the message less than one hour before the homeless to go on the auction block. By the time officers arrived at the Balderrama's house, they found she had fatally shot herself with her husband's rifle. But it has a lot of people talking because there are a lot of homes in foreclosure here, Oberg told ABC News. It's just a tragedy. Then again, someone told me that these financial stresses are tough because some people's lives are completely bound up in their houses. News story number two. Coworkers knew something was amiss when Karthik Rajaram missed his carpool that daily took him to his office. His family's cars both sat in the driveway. The lights were off in the home. The paper lay on the front doorstep, untouched. Mail from the day before remained in the box. Worried friends of the family called police and they found a tragic scene. six members of a family dead in a murder-suicide by a man in a financial crisis. The body of the father, Karthik Rajaram, 46, a gun clutched in one hand, was found by police officers in his gated community home in Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Most of the family members were shot in their beds. Absolute devastation, Deputy Chief Michael Moore told reporters outside the home. Police found two suicide notes and a will. The source of it appears to be a financial state, a crisis, if you will, that this man became embroiled in that has unfolded over the past weeks, Moore said. In his suicide note, the father wrote that he had felt he had two options, one to just kill himself or to kill himself and his family and decided that the second option was more honorable, Moore said. He just could not stand the prospect of his family not having the lifestyle to which they were accustomed, one friend said. Rajaram had lost all of his considerable wealth in the recent stock market downturn. So besides the obvious, what is wrong with this picture? At the root, what was it that made these people act so foolishly and take life and death into their own hands? Where is their treasure? Or let me ask you to Jesus words. Think about it in Jesus terms. For where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. So what do their actions tell us about what had captured their hearts? I think we will learn the answer to that and much about their hearts, but more importantly, much about our own hearts in these three kingdom parables of our Lord. Let's set the context, get the context. We're kind of jumping into the middle of Matthew's gospel. And so let's look at Matthew 13. This begins the third of five major sections that compose Matthew's gospel. The previous section, chapters 10 through 12, make up a second section that shows a building opposition to our Lord's ministry from chapter 13 through about the middle of chapter 16. The section here under consideration, this opposition forms two camps. Those who are beginning to see that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the fulfillment of the Old Testament and those who do not. It's always been this way throughout history, has it not? Because this is what happens when the kingdom of Christ is birthed into a person, when God breathes to life, saving faith in Christ, in his death and resurrection, that new believer becomes a part of a new people, a new ethnos, a new people God is raising up. He is no longer an enmity with his creator. But when a person becomes a follower of Christ, not everyone is still with him. And I am sure if you are a follower of Christ, you may have experienced this yourself. Not everyone is still with you if you seek to live faithfully to the gospel, because when you become a follower of Christ, some of your friends, they're no longer friends. They're long gone. And we see the same opposition to Christ, the act of doubt in these chapters and here in chapter 13, Luke distinguishes genuine members of the kingdom of God from false. It should be sobering. This should keep us and be a warning to us from presuming upon God's grace. So what's at stake this morning? It's like, well, you know, OK, this is about Christian living. I think there's so much more at stake this morning. I would argue that heaven and hell itself are at stake this morning because this describes what a kingdom person looks like, what has taken captive their hearts. So what is the purpose of parables? Sometimes this is misunderstood. Sometimes people see this as Jesus kind of illustrating his sermons are telling folks these stories are going to make people pay attention. But that's not what the word tells us. The secrets of the kingdom of heaven are about. These are things he calls them secrets back here in verse 11 of chapter 13, they are the things that existed in a veiled manner in the Old Testament. Those things that foreshadow that provided pictures are like a big finger pointing to Christ, but are now made clear to the disciples by the coming of the Messiah. And so we see here that the purpose of the parables is twofold. God sovereignly uses the parables to either harden a person's heart. so that he or she will be unwilling to respond to the gospel, or he uses it to open their eyes and make them willing to follow him. Let's read, where do I get this? This is this is audacious, but it tells us that when the preaching and the word of the word of God is preached, something happens. We don't sit and just act as unattached, detached observers. It is impossible. We're either softened by the word of God or we are hardened by the word of God. Something happens when this living word is preached to us. Look at verses 10 through 17. Then the disciples came and said to him, why do you speak to them in parables? They're mystified. Why? Why these stories? And he answered them, Our Lord, to you, it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom. They're the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. But to them, it has not been given. For to the one who has more will be given and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, as he puts Isaiah six, nine and 10 here. You will indeed hear, but never understand. And you will indeed see, but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull and with their eyes they can barely hear. Ears they can barely hear. And their eyes, they have closed. Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them. But blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people long to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. So the bottom line is to to understand these parables to hear with the ears of faith and to see with the eyes of faith and seeing here and hearing here is synonymous with believing the eyes and ears of faith is a sovereign gift of God. So for some of you, indeed, I hope most of you, the reading of these parables and this sermon will increase the knowledge and implications of the gospel of Christ, but. I think there's an implied warning here against presuming upon God's grace, especially given the parable of the sower and the outset of verse or chapter 13, where he speaks of four kinds of soil. The word is preaching. It falls into essentially four kinds of human hearts. Only one of them is effectual. Only one receives the word to his salvation. And also the parable of the weeds here, how the weeds, the weed and the tears, the weed and the weeds grow up in the world together. Some looking like Christians, others not. So let's look at these two parables, because I believe there's so much in here. The first two parables in verses 44 through 46, the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price. Jesus tells us what kind of person who will be in the kingdom of heaven and what they are like. Very simple and yet very profound. He is a person who will be willing to sell all and buy Christ, sell everything, give up everything and go hard after Christ. He will lay up treasure in heaven. He will be keenly aware that his best life is not now, but his best life is later. But first, what is the kingdom of heaven? What is the kingdom of God? Sometimes we can think of the kingdom of God as mainly a place, mainly a realm or but it's not that it's more better thought of as a rule or a reign, a kingship, a monarchy. And this reign is specifically God's saving or redeeming reign in Christ Jesus. The kingdom is being manifested in power when demons and unbelief and unrighteousness are being defeated and salvation and righteousness and peace and joy are happening. That is where the kingdom is located. When you see that there is the kingdom of heaven and, of course, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of Christ, they're the same thing. They're synonymous. The kingdom of Christ is already exists and it will exist in its fullness and the second coming of Christ. There is an already not yet principle here. We are members of the kingdom and we're being made members of the kingdom. There's a sense in which we can say the kingdom is already inaugurated, but not yet fully consummated because we don't see everything under Christ's feet just yet. And yet all things are under his feet in a sense, because he is sovereign. He is our king. And both both parables are communicating the same point, I believe. And is this people who are willing, who are really convinced rather of the greatness and glory and supremacy of Christ will be willing to give up everything they have to gain Christ, to gain his kingdom. It will be the consuming passion of their lives. This is a value statement. A value statement, the men in each parable, they value Christ, they value his gospel, they value membership in his kingdom above all else, and they're willing to give up all their money, all their worldly means, everything to their name to gain Christ. You have one man, one man stumbles upon a field. In which a treasure is buried and the treasure is Christ, and he goes and he sells everything and he buys Christ because the treasure is Christ. You have another man who goes in search of the jewel of greatest value and finds it. And the jewel is Christ and both sell everything and buy it. It's a very simple point. Very simple point. This is a description of the true Christian, the kingdom of God will be composed of those who are willing to give up everything for the sake of Christ, and they do this because they are thoroughly persuaded, as were the two men in the parables, that It is worthwhile that Christ is of greater value than money, a greater value than health, a greater value than life of any other thing. Christ for them is an endless treasure, a dazzlingly beautiful jewel, the beauty and the magnificence of which cannot be compared to any other thing, and so they are willing to lay down their lives if necessary to get this treasure. So, brothers and sisters, think about the irony. There's so many ironies. I think you know this intuitively, but there's so many ironies in the gospel, aren't there? So many paradoxes. I mean, think about the irony in the gospel of following Christ. On the one hand, salvation is free. We love to proclaim free grace in Christ Jesus and praise God for that. It is the gift of God and it costs us nothing. But on the other hand, following Christ costs us everything. Turn with me to Luke chapter 14. Let's read verses twenty five to thirty three. This text over the last few years has absolutely gripped me still, still thinking about the implications of what he says here. Well, listen to what he says. It's amazing. Now, the great crowds accompanied him. And he turned to them, Jesus, our Lord, and said to them, listen to this language, if anyone comes to me. And does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own wife, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is unable to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying this man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what came going out to encounter another king and war will not Sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand. And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So he summarizes. So, therefore, any of you who does not renounce all that he has. Cannot be my disciple, you catch the language there, if you're not willing to renounce all that you have. You cannot be my disciple. It's impossible. Those who are Christ's people, those are members of Christ's kingdom, are willing to forsake everything. What does it mean, it means this, it means so much, it means this is the very least that there is no crown without a cross. It means that if you become a follower of Christ, that your family may not get better. You may not have blue skies. And the bluebirds singing at your house every morning in fresh breath and white teeth and all the rest and a beautiful wife and all the things that the TV evangelists tell us we should have. It means your family may become worse when you become a Christian. There may be a fracture that it may cost you precious earthly relationships. But Jesus said you must be willing to give up those things and no doubt many of you have experienced these. I've experienced it myself. That love for father and mother and wife and even the good things, wife and children. Love for them, love for Christ compared to our love for them, love for them must look like hate, hate compared to our love for Christ. And we all love our families and love our children. I hope we have a natural love. Scripture speaks all for that. But compared to love for Christ, that must look like hate he's telling us here. Wow, such audacious language, and this is this is why we need Scripture, isn't it? Because Scripture corrects our sentimentality. It creates kind of our hallmark greeting card version of Christianity, you know, the kind of precious moments Christianity that we know is so prevalent in our country. But there is no crown without a cross. Many of you no doubt have heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a great Lutheran pastor in the during the World War two period in Germany. And he understood this so keenly. He wrote famously, When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die. And he knew all too well that of which he spoke. This Lutheran pastor was hanged in a concentration camp in April of 1945 for opposing Hitler and the Nazi regime because it was a satanic lie that ran contrary to the gospel. Because it saw. One race is being supreme to the other, that that was the church and Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew, no, God is creating a new people, a new ethnos that Jesus has come to die for people of every tribe and tongue and nation, and the true church will be the church that proclaims the gospel, not racial supremacy. It's a demonic lie and he paid with it for his life, but that's what the gospel calls. There's no crown without a cross. And I think there's an implied warning, as I said earlier in this text as well, look at the parable, the second parable that follows follows the parable of the dragnet back in our text in Matthew chapter 13. Let's read it again. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad. So it will be at the close of the age, the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place, there will be weeping. And gnashing of teeth. So in the church, in the church, there will be all kinds of fish, there will be all kinds of people, there will be those who are in the kingdom, there will be those who are not. They were mistaken in the visible church. And that is the church we see, not the invisible church that is the true church, the redeemed throughout the ages, but the visible church, the church I'm looking at now, the church I see when I preach in my own church. And so all these fish, both the good fish and the bad fish will be caught in the net together. Remember, I said also the parable of wheat and the tears, the weeds that grow up together in the world, many of them claiming to be in God's kingdom. Because you said we must be going to forsake all this is one of the distinguishing marks of the Christian, but what are those who what are those who will not forsake all look at Luke nine. Chapter nine, twenty three through twenty six. Jesus has some very stern and familiar words from what we've read earlier in Luke 14. Our Lord says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words of him, I'll be ashamed of him. Will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the father and of the holy angels? Later, turn later on the chapter versus fifty seven to sixty two. We show some who are not willing to forsake all as they were going along the road, someone said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nest, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. And to another, he said, follow me. But he said, Lord, let me first go bury my father. And Jesus said to him, leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. Yet another said, I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home. Jesus said to him, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. So what does our Lord say of those who are not willing to forsake all? He wants nothing to do with them. And there will be plenty of both in the church and you know them. I know them. I pray you're not one of them. I mean, some of them come to church every Sunday, but Christ does not have their heart. It belongs to lesser, more worldly pleasures. It belongs to television. It belongs to sports and sex and money and the desire for the applause of men and ten thousand other self idolatries. It belongs to everything but Christ and the religion is mere externalities. Oh, God, help us help us not to be have our Christianity is something that is merely external that we put on and take on and put off. If Christ is our treasure and we are willing to hate father and mother and wife and children and even our own lives, and if we are willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus, our lives will be shaped differently. It will take on a gospel picturing selflessness. A gospel picturing selflessness, many In the Bible had their affections radically transformed by God's grace is just a few a few illustrations from scripture. Think of Abraham in Genesis 22. God had given him Isaac, the son of promise, this one through whom the Messiah would come eventually. Galatians Paul tells us in Galatians three that that Abraham had the gospel proclaimed to him beforehand. It's right here in Genesis 22. Where God says, take this son of promise up to Mount Moriah and kill him, sacrifice him to the Lord, sacrifice him to me. And what does Abraham do? He goes and he does it. And he has faith, he trusts the Lord, he says the Lord will provide for himself the lamb. Because we know from Hebrews that he knew that God was able to raise the dead. He trusted God. And so this gospel selflessness drove him to commit what looked like, from a human standpoint, an egregious act of murder, sacrifice. Because God will not let even the good things he gives us, wives and children and jobs and all the rest, become idols to us. John Calvin said so famously, the human heart is an idol factory. are a people who will worship something. We are hardwired for worship, but God wants our hearts, wants everything. Christ will have all of us or nothing. Think of Queen Esther. There's a Jewish man named Mordecai who lived in the fifth century before Christ during the Jewish exile. He had a younger orphan cousin named Esther, whom whom he adopted as a daughter. She grew up to be a beautiful woman and eventually was taken by Persia's king to be his queen. And Haman, one of the king's chief princes, hated Mordecai, despised him. This was this man was an early racist and hated all the Jewish refugees and persuaded the king to decree that the Jews be exterminated. Human art has never changed, has it? The king did not realize his own queen was a Jew, and so Mordecai sent word to Esther to go before the king and plead the case of her people. But Esther knew there was a royal law that anyone who approached the king without being invited would be put to death unless the king lifted his golden scepter. She also knew that her people's lives were at stake, and so Esther sent her response to Mordecai in these words in Esther four, verses 15 and 16. Then Esther told them and replied to Mordecai. Go gather all the Jews to be found in Susa and hold a fast on my behalf and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish. Esther did not know the outcome of what her act would be. She did not have special revelation, as do we. She doesn't have the story of Esther. She didn't know she had she had nothing from God to tell her how it would turn out. But she made her decision on the basis of wisdom and love for her people and trust in God. She made her decision and left the results of God and saying, if I perish, I perish. Brothers and sisters, this is gospel inflamed courage. This is what the gospel does to a person. If I perish, I perish. Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel chapter three. They refused to worship this idol that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, the king of Babylon. And when he arrested them, they said, Our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve or worship your gods or worship the golden image you have set up. And of course, we know the story and they were cast into the fiery furnace. Refusing to worship the king, to worship this idol he had set up. And God rescued them, but they trusted God, even if he doesn't. He is Lord, and our life and death is in his hands. It is his prerogative. God is not a murderer. That is impossible. So they trusted God more than their eyes could see, as the children's story Bible tells us. I love that. Faith is trusting God more than our eyes can see. And that's what the gospel does, how it transforms us. Think of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. This tax collector, this crooked man, this deadbeat, this cheat gave half his goods to the poor after he met Jesus and restored fourfold the money he had swindled the people out of. And Jesus, in verse 10 of Luke 19, said today how salvation has come to this house since he was also a son of Abraham. It changed everything. Meeting our Lord, his heart was utterly transformed. So money was no longer his God. Paul and Very well known verse in Philippians three, seven and eight. But whatever gain I had, I counted as lost for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ everything. Paul, who had this Amazing, pharisaical pedigree. This incredible ethnic background is willing to forsake it all, he said. It is nothing but refuse compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. And I will do anything to attain the resurrection of the dead, he said. This is how it changed those godly men and women in scripture throughout history. How might it change you? How might it change us? What what might this do to us? How would it change? How would that change the church if Christ and the gospel became the true treasure of our hearts? How would it change you individually as members of a local church? Let's look at some categories, how it might change us, just a couple of various areas of everyday life and how it might change us if this became our worldview, if Christ became our all in all. How would it change the way we use time and money? They always said, you want to hit people where it hurts, hit them in the pocketbook, take away time. And indeed, we all know it's true for even the best of us. But the two men in the parables gave all their money. So let me let me put some numbers on you, not a big statistics person, but I like these numbers are telling might help us to think how this could change in some way the way you, me, us, the church uses time and money. And these are these are very staggering and sobering statistics, I think, convicting. The worldwide population at the moment is about stands about six point seven billion people. But the number of Christians and these are the most liberal figures as to the number of Christians include some of the heretical offshoots of Christianity, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, Unitarians, Universalists, etc. But even if you include those numbers, it puts the approximate number of Christians at about two billion people. Of course, we all know that's probably not the case. And there are approximately sixteen thousand five hundred people groups around the globe, but only six thousand five hundred of them have never heard the gospel, have no access to the gospel. More than twenty five thousand children die around the world daily from preventable diseases, many from starvation, from a lack of food. Orphans, more than two hundred thousand orphans in the former Soviet Union alone and millions more around the world, millions more globally. Now, stack those numbers up beside our stuff. So I don't think the things that we've come to see that I've come to see as an American, as a Westerner, as the basics, the things we have to have are our expensive homes. Our new cars, which, of course, depreciate three thousand dollars the moment we drive them off the lot. Flat screen TVs, our iPods, our iPhones, our iPads and on and on as it goes, I'm going to be the first to tell you, I have many of these gadgets like many of these gadgets preaching this to myself. So this is as much for me as it is you, but remember those in the news stories of which we began, what was their treasure? It was their stuff. And when their stuff was gone, they counted their lives as worthless. No stuff, no life. Paul tells us in Colossians three, five, that greed is idolatry, that money scripture tells us that money can take on divine attributes and our relationship to it far too often can approximate worship and obedience. Tim Keller. Tells us that that's why reminds us that's why the Bible is full of admonitions against the love of money. Keller says money can become a spiritual addiction to people. And like all addictions, it hides its true consequences from its victims. We take more and greater risks to get an ever diminishing satisfaction from that which we crave. And then a breakdown occurs. It's true, isn't it, that We take more and greater risks. To get an ever diminishing satisfaction from that which we crave and a breakdown occurs when we look for satisfaction and pleasure and our treasure in these things and these things in and of themselves, of course, there's nothing wrong with these things, that's not my point. So hear me clearly. But as the people in the news stories of which we open, what are the wages of money worship? What are the wages of money idolatry? The prosperity profits preach a deadly, deadly false gospel, indeed, because as G.K. Chesterton put it so well, the Christian gospel preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valuable. Christ and materialism, they do not coexist well. But what if Christ became and his gospel became our ultimate treasure? Might we, David Platt, who's the pastor of a church at Brook Hills in Alabama and Birmingham, put a challenge kind of like this before his congregation a few months ago, and it really has transformed how they see their things, even the church's money. We even ask, how might we might we use our money, our time or money on a short term or even lifelong missions to tell those four point seven billion or more people who are bound up in darkness that Christ has come to rescue those who walk in darkness? Might we, if Christ were our life, might we go to our lost neighbor who lives next door down the street, our lost co-worker? Might we risk humiliation? Might we be willing to give the world a picture of the gospel by adopting and several of you have done this and praise God. But might we adopt into our family an orphan child from Haiti or China or Ethiopia? Might that be the cause to discipleship for us? What a glorious picture of the gospel. I said in Sunday school this morning, your adoption class. Praise God that that's becoming a part of the fabric of the theological thinking of this church. But don't just think about it. Act on it. And I know you are. I'm so happy about that. That's wonderful. Or might we be willing to maybe drive a less expensive car so we can give money to countries whose water supply is disease infested so we can help them develop systems of clean water? Might it be that simple? It could be. Or might we be able to better convince the world that the gospel really does transform sinful hearts of the glory of God if we did some of these things and many more things like this? If Christ were our pearl of great price, might it change the way we view health and safety? There's time and money. What about health and safety? Are we willing to risk all for the sake of Christ or have we bought into what John Piper calls the myth of safety? It is a myth. Surely, after what happened Thursday, you know you're not safe anywhere you go. There are microbursts out there and they sometimes fall on Charlottesville without warning. We will live in a fallen world and it is a dangerous world. But as Christians, brothers and sisters, what are we afraid of? We know that the psalmist says that we are immortal until God calls us home. I love this psalm. Psalm 139, 16 says, In your book were written every one of them, the days that were ordained before me, when as yet there were none of them. Every day of your life is written in the book of history, in God's book before any of them are lived out. And you are immortal until God calls you home. So what are you? What am I afraid of? Because God is sovereign. And we should never get tired of saying this, I know, you know, I know we come from a certain theological framework. We love to say God is sovereign. We can almost found it is kind of a cliche, but it should never come to become a cliche because God is sovereign over every molecule and atom and grasshopper and grain of sand and every cancer cell and everything else in all the created order. Nothing will befall you that is not first been filtered through God's love. Through his loving kindness, Romans 828 tells us that. And I've heard people say, well, don't just glibly, glibly quote Romans 828 to Christians. Why not? We don't glibly quote it, but it's the word of God. It should comfort us. All things work together. God causes all things to work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Of course, we know that's true, but there's that is true. Why is there such a thing as risk? It's because there is such a thing as ignorance. There are many of us and you, myself included, who have advanced degrees out of our names, lots of letters, just kind of a lot of alphabet out there by our letter, right? But we're ignorant and the only ways it really counts when it comes to knowledge, we don't know the future. We don't know what's going to happen this afternoon. We are not sovereign. We don't know how things will turn out like Queen Esther. We have no idea. All of our plans for tomorrow can be shattered by a thousand unknown factors, all of them invisible, all of them hidden from us. Whether we stay at home under the covers and bury our heads or we fly around the world on a jet airplane, we are not safe in this world. So we must not fall under this enchanting spell of safety because it is nothing but a mirage. That's the people in Haiti. I bet they don't. It's not bought into the myth of safety in all these months after the earthquake. Of course, like I said, you know this yourselves and what happened Thursday, we're coming for Bible school. It was a nice it wasn't a dark and stormy night like Charlie Brown said. In fact, it was the opposite of a nice afternoon. You're coming to church and before evening was out, property was damaged. Trees were down. The electricity was off. And some of you are still doing without these things. We don't know, do we? We don't know how things are going to turn out, but. As Piper reminds us, our buying into the myth of safety is part of our failure to make Christ our treasure, and it paralyzes us from taking risks in order to serve others along the Calvary road of love, of seeing others as better than ourselves, of exhibiting this gospel selflessness. But it is right. Oh, it is right to risk for the cause of Christ. I mean, do you think Paul, the apostle Paul, blinked in the face of danger? In Acts 20, 23 says the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. And yet he set his face like Flint to take the gospel, the good news of God's redeeming love in Christ to those very cities, he did not cower in fear. What about Esther? What about Daniel? What about Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego? What about Abraham? What about those in the stories of which news stories of which we began? What? Where was their security? It was in their jobs. It was in their 401K plans. They saw a future without big money and without big homes, and they saw no security and no hope and no reason to live at all. What about us? What is our safety? What is your safety? Are you willing? Am I willing? I continue to ask myself this in light of that this passage in Luke 14, I told you, I've spent so much of my time the last few years meditating on this. Am I willing to forsake everything and follow Christ and risk all for the sake of his gospel and his glory? Because Christ is his treasure and I trust him. Is my life so bound up in Christ that I'm willing to say with Queen Esther, if I perish, I perish. Is it? In the first few centuries of the church to become a Christian was to risk your life, particularly in the Roman Empire, who routinely made a sport out of feeding Christians to the lions. And if it were to come to that again, where would you be? It would separate the wheat from the tares pretty quickly, I would say, wouldn't it separate the men from the boys? Would we be courageous or bold for Christ or would we shrink back to our destruction? Do we really believe our theology that God is sovereign? So how would we view health and safety and finally, how How would we view how would this change the way we view pleasure? How would this change the way we view a good time? Pleasure. Are we too easily amused? I suspect that we are. Do you think the man who bought the treasure in the field kept back his golf clubs or his Xbox or his surround sound TV system? Does television or golf or baseball or even good theology books as glorious as those are? Carry more weight with us than Christ and his word. Do they think of these convicting words from C.S. Lewis? If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. Lewis says we are half hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea, we are far too easily amused. And so we are. But there are far greater, far deeper pleasures in Christ when he is our treasure, pleasures of being set free from sinful self-love to joyfully love and serve others, to use our spare time in a way that demonstrates that Christ is our treasure, maybe by by fellowshipping and encouraging brothers and sisters who are going to visit a nursing home where older people can't get out to come to church. Maybe it's as simple as that. We don't like to do that because it takes us away from our time. But are we loving them as Christ and his grace has loved us? So in closing, what is at stake here? What is at stake? I think I said this earlier, but if you take these three parables together, along with the implied warning, your soul is at stake. My soul is at stake. Ask yourself, is Christ my all in all? Is the one who is fully God and fully man, the one who lived a sinless life for 33 years on Earth, who died on the cross as a substitute for sinners, who bore the wrath for my sins that I so richly deserve to bear, this one who makes sinners righteous by giving them his righteousness. This one whom God raised up on the third day, who ascended into heaven 40 days later, where he lives and intercedes right now this morning while I preach, he intercedes for us. Is he your treasure? Is he my treasure? And if the answer is yes, then ask your ask yourself, how does my day to day life reflect that? Could I convince a law court that I'm a Christian by my daily life? They just follow me around and kind of watch to me all day. Are you ready to sell everything and buy Christ and do the implications of that give you joy like the man who bought the field or the man who went in search of the pearl of great price? Do you have any reason to think when the net is cast, the good fish are separated from the bad fish that you will enter his kingdom as one of the good fish? Here's the problem. Here's the problem. There's a problem here. You can't do this. This is far too great for you. You cannot do this on your own strength. This is not I am not here proposing a vow of poverty as a way to the Lord. No, you cannot do this, but by God's grace, because Paul says, by great for by grace, you can say through faith is not of yourself is a gift of God so that no man may boast. You did not. You could not. You would not justify yourself before God. He died for you, justified you. He granted you repentance and faith. He chose you before the foundation of the world. He has now indwelt you with his spirit, all as a gift of his grace, and he will sanctify you entirely by his grace as well. So that's the problem. You must pray. You must pray that he will make Christ your treasure above everything else, so that as when him writer says so, well, the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in light of his glory and grace. That must be our prayer. Let's pray the prayer of every one of us that you may be like the man who found the treasure in the field or the merchant who found the great jewel and sold all and bought Christ. And when Christ is your all in all, your life will look different. The American dream will no longer be so intoxicating. He is your all in all. So I want to be clear here, I am not proposing a works righteousness, a, like I said, proposing a vow of poverty. You just give everything away and then you'll be saved. That's not his point. His point is these are the implications of the gospel for those who are in the kingdom. We're saved by grace and none of these activities themselves would make us right with God. And there is nothing wrong with having some of these things in and of themselves. But my question is this, do you have these things or do these things have you? That is a question. If we are Christ's people and our lives are centered on Christ and centered on his gospel, our day in and day out existence should emit a decidedly different fragrance than that of the world. I close with this illustration, many of you probably heard this. Missionary Jim Elliott was killed by the way Doni people, the very people he sought to evangelize in 1956, a very famous quote, a very profound. But he is no fool to give who gives what he cannot keep to gain. That he can what he cannot lose and said again, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Do you believe that? Are you willing to live and die for it? Or our Lord Jesus, ask it this way, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his soul? Let's pray together. Oh, Father, how we need your mercy. And how we need your grace to wean us from the lesser pleasures of this world. To wean us from the city, the love of the city, which we can see to love the city, which we cannot see. Father, may I pray that you would cause our life to reflect this gospel selflessness, that we would be your people, the church would be your church, that we would be distinguishable from the world. Not because of our self-righteousness and not because of our the things that we stand against, but of our the gospel fragrances permeates our lives, our selflessness, our willing to lay down our lives, our love to God and our love to neighbor, which by your grace will prove our love to God in the end. So I pray that it would be so by your grace and for your glory through Jesus Christ, our Lord, we pray. Amen.